Divorce may be triggering eating disorders in middle-aged women, say experts. They warn that those in their forties are in danger of bulimia and anorexia from life changes including marriage breakdown and the death of a parent.
A British study found that 15 percent of middle-aged women have battled an eating disorder, and almost a quarter of these have done so in the past year.
It was thought that by this age women had passed the ‘window of risk’ for eating disorders, which are most frequently associated with teenagers.
The higher-than-expected figures are being blamed, at least in part, on emotional upheaval in later life. Rebecca Field of the eating disorder charity Beat said, “Eating disorders come at all ages, not just for people under the age of 18, and there are many life changes like divorce and bereavement which happen to people in later life and can act as triggers.”
Research suggests some people have a biological or genetic predisposition to eating disorders and are plunged into them by sudden change.
Field added, “One environmental factor might be changes in normal daily life and routine. The anxiety from these changes could lead to an eating disorder.”
The study, by University College London and Icahn School of Medicine in New York, was the first to look at eating disorders in women aged 40 to 50. The results, published in the journal BMC Medicine, left researchers surprised.
The survey of more than 5,300 British women found that 15.3 percent – nearly one in six – have had an eating disorder in their lifetime, with 3.6 percent reporting one in the previous 12 months.
Women in their forties were at higher risk of bulimia if their mother gave them little affection. The death of a parent in childhood made someone seven times more likely to develop the disorder.
Lead author Dr Nadia Micali, of University College London, said of those who develop their problem in later life, “Eating disorders can be set off by one of a number of traumatic events – and divorce is certainly a stressful experience. What we found from our study is that women who are suffering an eating disorder are not accessing healthcare services. They are suffering in silence, possibly because they do not realise many other women are in the same boat. By being made aware of this, we hope they will be more likely to seek help.”
The authors say eating disorders are more common than once thought. Women who regularly overeat to excess are now diagnosed as having a binge-eating disorder, while the criteria for anorexia and bulimia have been widened.
The study found that a woman’s risk of suffering from anorexia or bulimia was increased if they had an unhappy childhood.
A good mother-daughter relationship was associated with a 20 percent reduction in the chance of developing bulimia.
Christopher Fairburn, professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, said using interviews to diagnose people retrospectively may be difficult, as they tend to over-report problems.
He added, “These women should know that a large proportion of them can be helped and that they are not alone or unusual in having an eating problem in middle age. Forty to 50 percent of women with anorexia can be cured completely – and the cure rate is as high as 60 to 70 percent in women with bulimia nervosa or binge-eating disorder.”
More than 36,000 women in their forties get divorced in the UK each year, according to the latest official figures. Women aged 40 to 44 are the most likely to face a marriage breakdown, closely followed by those aged 45 to 49.